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Florida’s Rejected Rail Funds Head North

By Patrick McGeehan May 9, 2011 3:54 pmMay 9, 2011 3:54 pm

Kirsten Luce for The New York TimesThe federal transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, center, as Representative Jerrold L. Nadler of New York spoke at Pennsylvania Station on Monday about federal aid that will be used to improve rail service.

If there had been a piñata in Pennsylvania Station on Monday, it would have borne a resemblance to Florida’s governor, Rick Scott.

Governor Scott took a verbal whacking from New York and New Jersey lawmakers who had gathered to announce the distribution of $2 billion in federal transportation money. It had been meant for Florida until Mr. Scott, a Republican, rejected the Obama administration’s proposal to build a fast train line between Orlando and Tampa.

But if Florida does not want the money, the Northeast is happy to have it.

The federal transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, rode Amtrak to Manhattan to announce that $795 million of the money would instead go toward improvements along the Northeast Corridor, the rail line that runs between Washington and Boston.

Those upgrades should increase the reliability of the existing service and could allow Amtrak trains to go as fast as 160 miles per hour along a stretch of tracks in central New Jersey.

If that happens, it would be a step toward President Obama’s goal of establishing high-speed rail around the country. True high-speed rail systems that have been built from scratch in other countries, like China, have top speeds as high as 220 m.p.h.

“If you want to award hundreds of millions of dollars for high-speed rail,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said, “you need not ask New York twice.”

Mr. Lautenberg also aimed a zinger at Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican who canceled a project to build a rail tunnel under the Hudson River that would have received $3 billion from the federal government. “We learned something in New Jersey,” he said. “We learned if you reject federal money, you gain nothing and you pay a high price for it.”

Officials have not said how the $3 billion will be redistributed.

In turning down the money for their projects, Mr. Christie and Mr. Scott both cited concerns about potential project cost overruns, saying taxpayers could be stuck with the balance.

Mr. LaHood has demanded that New Jersey repay $271 million that the federal government spent on the canceled Hudson tunnel. On Monday, he said he was awaiting a response to his department’s rejection of New Jersey’s arguments that it should not have to repay the money.

Still, federal officials did not use their anger over Mr. Christie’s unilateral scrapping of the tunnel as a reason to deny New Jersey some of the money. One of the grants Mr. LaHood announced was for $450 million in improvements along the New Jersey portion of the Northeast Corridor line.

That investment should allow new Amtrak trains to cover a 24-mile segment from New Brunswick, N.J., to Morrisville, Pa., in as little as 9 minutes, down from about 11 minutes now. The trains Amtrak operates on that line can go as fast as 150 m.p.h., but the system cannot handle them traveling above 135 m.p.h., according to a spokeswoman for the Transportation Department.

In New York City, Amtrak plans to spend about $295 million of the money to reorganize what Mr. Schumer called the “spaghetti” of tracks on the Queens side of the East River tunnels. Those upgrades would allow Amtrak to avoid delays by bypassing slower-moving Long Island Rail Road trains.

Just in time to point up the need for additional spending in the region, an Amtrak train derailed on Sunday in a tunnel under the East River, reducing service on the Long Island Rail Road on Monday. Officials of the railroad said they expected “significant adjustments” to morning and evening peak service through Wednesday.

Sorting out the tracks and signals in that interchange is necessary to prepare for the advent of high-speed rail travel through the city, said Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat whose district covers parts of Manhattan and Queens. “It’s a huge grant, and it’s going to create a lot of jobs,” Ms. Maloney said.

Some elected officials were less thrilled about how the department was approaching high-speed rail in the Northeast, where it is widely considered most likely to succeed. Representative John L. Mica, Republican of Florida and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, criticized the “piecemeal” approach to upgrades and again called for the planning of high-speed rail to be turned over to the private sector.

But the politicians from the New York area said they were pleased to be finally receiving money for high-speed rail projects. “It is piecemeal, but that’s life as it is,” Senator Lautenberg said.

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